Håkan Dahlström, some rights reserved
Self-evidently, Cameron’s settlement with the rest of the EU is deeply flawed. It has damaged the Union, loosened Britain’s already fraying links with it and strengthened the neo-liberal hegemony in the prosperous north of the continent. It does nothing to lessen the appeal of anti-European populists of the radical right. It has benefited our overblown and sometimes criminal financial sector, but it does nothing for the people of the United Kingdom. No one with progressive instincts could possibly campaign for it.
Yet a progressive vision of the EU and its future is desperately needed. So-called ‘big beasts’ have been flocking into the Brexit camp – Lord Michael Howard; Lord Nigel Lawson; Lord David Owen; Ian Duncan Smith; Boris Johnson; Michael Gove; and, in his own special way, Nigel Farage. But the big beasts have little brains. They offer a Houdini-like escape from the constraints of the real world. With one bound, they tell us, Britain can be free: free from pesky European judges, free from tiresome EU regulations, free from EU migrants, free from EU-made trade deals and, above all, free from the negotiation, consultation and compromise which are fundamental to the political process of the extraordinary confederation which is the European Union.
